[Tagging] destination:ref with direction?

[Tom Pfeifer]

Trying to understand your question, the way in your example is tagged:

destination	Troy
destination:ref	I 787 North

 From the data consumer perspective, such tagging will generate a navigation instruction:
"turn slightly right towards Troy, I 787 North". This would be helpful as long as the driver
is able to recognise it on the local signposting.

What is written on the sign at this junction? If "North" is mentioned there I would be
happy enough with the tagging above.

I have seen the compass direction quite often signposted on major roads in the US,
thus the question boils down if it is considered to be part of the 'ref'.
A general tag for the compass direction is 'direction', which is used 79% (shy of 1 mill
times) on highways.

So for the interstate itself, splitting it into ref=I 787 and direction=N would be preferable.

tom

On 16.12.2020 04:40, Skyler Hawthorne wrote:
> I've seen a few examples in both New York and California put in the tags of on-ramps the 
> destination:ref that has the direction in it, e.g.: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/5566969
> 
> However, after looking through the wiki, to my surprise, I cannot find this practice mentioned 
> anywhere. It made sense to me when I saw it because how else is GPS navigation supposed to tell you 
> which highway to get onto? But I don't see it mentioned anywhere, and in fact, the only thing the 
> wiki page on Highway Directions in the United States mentions is putting the direction on the ways 
> of the actual freeway.